DEI at public colleges, medical schools comes under congressional attack

Higher Ed Dive

Lilah Burke

March 7, 2024

Dive Brief:

• Republicans on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce took aim at colleges’ diversity, equity and inclusion practices during a two-hour hearing Thursday.

• Republicans focused much of their attention on diversity in medical education, antisemitism, and the budgets and staffing of DEI offices at colleges.

• The hearing could give insight to Republicans’ legislative priorities. Republicans control the committee, which oversees federal higher education initiatives and influences legislation affecting colleges.

Dive Insight:

Medical education was a popular topic among Republicans at the hearing. That’s likely due in part to the testimony of Stanley Goldfarb, a former associate dean at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine.

Goldfarb — who founded Do No Harm, an organization which seeks to roll back DEI initiatives in medical education — has attracted criticism for his views. One op-ed in the medical news publication STAT accused him of trying to advance a “racist narrative.”

“Your future doctors are learning about divisive politics at the expense of lifesaving care,” he said in his opening remarks. “They’re being taught to discriminate by race and not treat patients equally.”

Goldfarb argued that spending classroom time on issues of policing, climate change and intersectionality is depriving future doctors of education on the fundamentals of medicine and care.

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